It is often desirable to take cold drinks, sandwiches and the like, along when hiking, fishing, traveling or attending sports events. The present invention provides a lightweight, reusable container for carrying and cooling canned beverages, sandwiches and other light foods.
Prior art cooling containers employ slow warming cooling gels or other means of cooling, and come in a variety of designs and configurations, but none has contemplated use of the principle that heat rises and cold drops to retain more effectively canned beverages or other foods in a cold state. Moreover, none has recognized that the handling of bulky packages of freezing gels, such as "Blue Ice", can be an undesirable problem in refrigerator freezing compartments. In prior art devices, in order to prepare the cooling means for use it is necessary to place that part of the unit which contains the cooling means in a freezer.
The present invention incorporates the cooling means in its lid which is not much larger than an ice cube tray. This is a significant improvement over the coolers which have the cooling means located in a relatively large bottom portion of the container. Such an arrangement requires that a substantial amount of space be made available in the user's freezer compartment in order to prepare the cooling means for use.
Other prior art coolers are constructed so as to provide accommodations for either canned beverages or sandwiches and the like, but not both. Other prior art coolers contemplate use of only the slow-freezing gels, such as "Blue Ice", as the cooling medium for the cooling containers, and are not equipped to permit the use of water for both cooling purposes and for drinking.
It is an objective of the present invention to provide a cooling container for delivering cold air to the lower areas of the cooling container and to insulate canned beverages and sandwiches or the like in order to keep them cold for longer periods of time.
It is also an objective of this invention to provide a removable water container in the lid of the cooling container for both cooling and drinking purposes.